William Fisher Peach Dimond was a playwright of the early 19th-century who wrote about thirty works for the theatre, including plays, operas, musical entertainments and melodramas.
William Edward Dodd was an American historian, author and diplomat. A liberal Democrat, he served as the United States Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937 during the Nazi era. Initially a holder of the slightly antisemitic notions of his times, he went to Germany with instructions from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to do what he could to protest Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany "unofficially," while also attempting to follow official State Department instructions to maintain cordial official diplomatic relations. Convinced from first hand observation that the Nazis were an increasing threat, he resigned over his inability to mobilize the Roosevelt administration, particularly the State Department, to counter the Nazis prior to the start of World War II.
William Drake Westervelt was the author of several books and magazines on Hawaiian history and legends. He drew upon the collections of David Malo, Samuel Kamakau, and Abraham Fornander to popularize Hawaiian folklore in his Legends of Maui (1910), Legends of Old Honolulu (1915), Legends of Gods and Ghost-Gods (1915), Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (1916) and Hawaiian Historical Legends (1923).
Sir William Dugdale was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject.
William Dunbar was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. His surname is also spelt Dumbar.
